Blood On My Hands
by blacksouledbutterfly
Summary: Ariadne met Eames once when she was still a child. He helped her out of a tough situation. He doesn't remember her though but she remembers him. She remembers how he helped change her life.


He stays at her place a lot, after long and tiresome jobs, when he gets called to Paris to work with their team or another. He crashes in her bed; they fuck like rabbits, fall asleep with the sheets sticking to their sweaty bodies.

Sometimes, late at night, when the moonlight peering through the curtains is the only thing that's lighting up the room she watches him, runs her fingers over his scars- on his chest, his arms. She watches his face, takes in the subtle changes that have occurred over the years. He's older now and yet the same. He's older now and yet looks exactly as he always has. 

* * *

><p><em>Her mother is crying again. She's curled up on the living room floor. Her face is all bruised up again, her lip split. She had heard the fighting from her room, sitting on her bed with her textbooks open in front of her. She used to try to drown it out but lately she's been letting it in, took in every word that was said.<em>

_Tommy left around ten o'clock and her mother's cries echoed throughout the house. Ariadne waited almost an hour before she came out of her room, got a bowl of water out of the kitchen, grabbed a towel and went into the living room like she had done dozens of times before._

_She crouches down next to her mother, dips the towel in the water, reaches out and dabs her mother's split lip, listens to her flinch, watches her push herself up into a sitting position, bloodshot eyes on her face._

_"I'm sorry," her mother whispers._

_"It isn't your fault."_

_Her mother breaks down again as soon as those words leave Ariadne's mouth. She wraps her arms around her daughter, cries into her shoulder. Her hair sticks to her neck, moist and salty as she lets her mother cry._

_She stopped crying over it a long time ago._

* * *

><p>Ariadne is always the one to make breakfast. She's up before he is, makes coffee for herself, makes tea for him.<p>

He comes out of the bedroom in nothing but his boxer shorts, presses a kiss to her temple before he sits down across from her, drinks his tea in silence, watches her methodically chew on her food.

"Are you going to visit your mother again soon, darling?" She goes home at least twice a year, packs her bags and leaves for a week. She never tells them where she's going except to say that she's going to see her mother. She never tells him where her mother lives, never talks about her otherwise.

"Next month."

"Do you want me to come with you?"

"No."

It's the same answer every time. Sometimes he's not sure why he asks. Sometimes he's not sure if she's waiting for him to stop.

But she never asks him to stop. 

* * *

><p><em>Tommy was still there when Ariadne went to sleep. He had been screaming at her mother again so she had put her headphones on to drown it out, curled up into a ball beneath her sheets and went to sleep.<em>

_She woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of her mother crying. Its past three in the morning and Ariadne throws her legs over the edge of the bed and stuck her feet into her pink fuzzy slippers, made her way down the hall to where her mother's cries are echoing in the bathroom._

_Pushing the door open a bit she pauses in the doorway, watches her mother sitting in the shower, the water pouring down on her. She's naked, her legs bent up close to her chest. She's shaking, scrubbing at her skin with her sponge, her nails, turning it red and angry._

_"Mom?"_

_Diana stops, turns her head slightly to look at her daughter in the doorway, her brown eyes widening. She sniffles, looks back at her hands on her legs. "It's okay, baby," she soothes her daughter. "It's going to be okay." But even at twelve years-old Ariadne knows that's a lie; even at twelve years-old she knows it isn't going to be okay._

_"Mom? Did he hurt you again?"_

_"No, baby." Her voice breaks as she says it though she shakes her head. "No, I'm fine. Just go back to bed."_

_Even as she backs away from the door she knows her mother's lying._

* * *

><p>Whenever Ariadne comes home from visiting her mother she's annoyingly quiet. No matter how many times Eames tries to get her to talk about the visit she stays quiet, sits on the couch with him, rests her head on his shoulder.<p>

Sometimes, when she comes home, she doesn't want to talk at all, she doesn't want to watch TV. She calls him when she's getting on her plane to get back to Paris and he shows up at her door within an hour after she's back in her apartment. And then she grabs him, her hands fisting in his shirt and she tugs him into apartment, crushes her mouth against his.

That's the only time she's overtly aggressive. Her hands pull at his clothes, her mouth against his. She pushes him down onto her bed, rides him like her life depends on it. And the entire time she doesn't look at him. Instead she just looks at the wall like her mind is going somewhere else.

She doesn't like him touching her when she's riding him like that. It took him a few times to get used to that though, the instinct to put his hands on her almost overwhelming. But every time he would put his hands on her thighs, her lips, runs his hands up her sides and cup her breasts in his hands. And every time she would take them off of her, almost violently shove them away.

Now he's learned not to put his hands on her in times like this. Instead he fists his hands in his sheets and watches her as she moves, her hips moving against his, the way her chest is heaving, the way her hair hangs around her face, sweat making her skin glisten in the moonlight. He doesn't touch her at all anymore until they're done and she collapses against his chest. Then he wraps his arms around her, runs his finger through her sweaty hair, presses a kiss to the part in her hair.

He asks her almost every single time what had happened to upset her so much when she was away but every single time she refuses to answer him. she just curls up against his side in bed, rests her head against his chest, has him wrap his arm around her so that she can feel the comfort of his body, listen to the beating of his heart in his chest.

Sometimes he wonders why he keeps asking her. 

* * *

><p><em><em>Her mother had gone out, something she rarely ever did. Whenever Tommy came over and Diana wasn't there he would get angry and when she got back he would let her know just how angry- with words, with his fists. But sometimes Diana just needed to get out of the house and so she would risk it despite knowing Tommy would get angry; despite knowing that Tommy had a key.<em>_

__She left after he was sure that Ariadne was asleep, got into her car and drove over to a friend's house to have a drink with her. But Ariadne wasn't asleep. Ariadne had just pretended to be asleep so that her mother wouldn't worry.__

__Diana has been gone for only an hour or so before the front door opens. She can hear Tommy storming through the house, his construction boots booming against the floorboards. He slams the doors around the house and she curls up under her covers, tries to make herself as small as possible, tries to pretend that she's not in the house anymore.__

__Her bedroom door opens and she clenches her eyes shut. The sound of him walking across the room to her bed is louder than anything she's ever heard before, the springs of her mattress creaking when he sits down on the edge of her bed making her flesh crawl.__

__"Ari," he croons. "Oh, Ari." She tries to block it out, clenches her eyes shut tighter and he reaches out, grabs onto her covers and yanks them back, pulls them out of her much smaller hands. "Where did your mother go? Hmm?"__

__"I don't know." It comes out in a small moan, a broken sound. She knows her mother wouldn't have left her there if she thought Tommy would hurt her but she can't help but be afraid of Tommy every time she's in the room with him. And now, with him as angry as he is and no one to get between them she's so nervous she feels like she has to pee really, really bad.__

__"Now, I know that's not true." Reaching up Tommy runs his hand over her hair, curls his hand into a fist and yanks her head back at a painful angle. She whimpers and he smiles. His breath smells sour, smells like alcohol and stale cigarettes. "You know where your mother went. Now, be a good girl and tell me."__

__"I don't know. I don't."__

__"You little lying bitch." His free hand comes down across her mouth and she tastes blood in her mouth, smells the coopery tang of it. His hand in her hair tightens and she tries to scream but she can't. The sound just dies in her throat.__

__The rest of the night she doesn't much remember. She supposes that she blocked it out. It's a blur of angry words and her crying, the sound of fabric ripping and flesh against flesh.__

__It's easier not to remember.__

* * *

><p><em><em>

_Diana doesn't believe her. It isn't because she doesn't want to, because she thinks her daughter is some big liar that wants to make things harder for her but because she can't imagine Tommy actually hurting Ariadne. Never before had she seen him do anything to her. As long as he had Diana to take his anger out on he hadn't laid a hand on her daughter._

_Two weeks later and her mother still doesn't believe her. Tommy still has a key; Tommy still comes over every day. Tommy still beats Diana black and blue any time the mood strikes him to, anytime that he gets frustrated. And Ariadne still hides in her room most of the time, afraid to be out near him when he's angry. But this is different. Now she has a very real reason to be afraid._

_And that's when she decides what she has to do, hiding in her room while her mother gets the crap beaten out of her she knows what she has to do. Her mother isn't going to change anything about her life, isn't going to do anything about Tommy and what he did to them- or still does to them. And if she isn't going to then Ariadne has to._

_That's why one night, one particularly bad night, while her mother and Tommy are sleeping, Tommy having passed out after drinking too much, she sneaks out of her room, pads down the hall in her socks to where Tommy keeps his work gloves. She slips them on though they are far too big for her, grabs the gardening shears from the junk drawer in the kitchen and sneaks outside without putting on her shoes or her jacket._

_Tommy's car sits in the driveway next to the bedroom window and when she gets to the car she can hear him moving, can hear him grunt. She ducks down low so that she can't be seen through the window, takes a couple of slow, deep breaths to try to calm herself down and waits, just waits until she's sure he's not awake, that he's not going to hear her. And then she does what she set out to do._

_She climbs down beneath the car, takes the flashlight she had put in her pocket out and turns it on, looks up at the wires under the car. She knows that Tommy is careless, that he never wears his seatbelt when he gets in the car. And that's why she takes the gardening shears and reaches up, snips the brake line._

_She makes her way back into the house as quickly as she can; she puts the shears back, puts the gloves away and crawls into bed, pulls the covers up to her chin and tries, tries, tries to sleep. But she's got that anxious feeling in her stomach again, has that feeling of needing to pee only she's not scared this time. This time it's because she's anxious; this time she's waiting for her plan to be complete._

_And, like usual, he wakes up around nine in the morning and stumbles down the hall. He grabs his keys off of the holder and makes his way out to the car. And Ariadne sits in her bed and listens. She listens to him climb into the car, listens to the engine turn over and then listens to him pulling out. And it's only about a minute later that she hears the sound of crashing outside, hears metal crunching and glass breaking._

_Diana goes running down the hall towards the door, a fresh bruise on her neck. Ariadne follows after her, follows her out into the yard in her socks, squints against the morning sun. She can hear Diana screaming as she stands there on the front porch. There are people coming out of their houses; people are all talking, confused. And then Diana collapses to her knees on the porch but Ariadne keeps walking._

_She makes her way towards the car, keeps her gaze on the smashed up front end where it's against the tree. Someone is yelling at her to get back, that it's dangerous but she doesn't listen, she moves anyway. She moves until she can see Tommy, his face bloody against the steering wheel, his eyes closed. She looks at him even as she can see smoke rising from under the hood, reaches out and brushes her fingers through the blood on Tommy's face. And then someone's grabbing her and pulling her away, is shoving her into a lawn across the street._

_Behind her she can hear the car blow._

* * *

><p>When he comes over Ariadne is going through boxes. Two weeks before he had been on a job when Ariadne called him crying, had told him that her mother had died. He offered to fly back to be there with her but she told him to finish the job, not to worry about her. She had flown home for the funeral and was back at home by the time he was back in Paris.<p>

She's sitting on the living room floor when he lets himself in, digging through boxes she had kept in the closet. There are stacks of papers on the floor, photo albums and loose pictures. She doesn't even turn when he first comes inside, just sits there and keeps organizing papers into two separate piles.

It's nearly an hour later when she stands up from the floor, looks over at him sitting on her couch. "I'm going out to buy coffee," she tells him, pulls on her coat, distractedly presses a kiss to his cheek before she makes her way out the door.

She's not gone more than five minutes before he reaches down and grabs one of her photo albums off of the floor, flips through it. He looks at pictures of her, a smiling baby crawling across the living room floor, a five year-old at the beach in her bathing suit. He gets to see parts of her that he's never seen before, parts of her that he had wondered about but she never mentioned.

It's nice to see her as a child, to see the parts of her that she hadn't gotten to see before. These are parts that she hadn't shared with him at all, memories that she had kept to herself. He's not sure why but she refuses to tell him anything about what her life was like before she came to Paris. They talk about a great many things but those things she keeps to herself. But each memory he gets to see now is like a gift, a window into her life. He gets to see her sitting on her mother's lap, a mother with eyes as dark as Ariadne's, with the same dark, wavy hair. The similarity between them is strong that it's almost impossible not to notice. And the similarity gets stronger as the years go on, as he watches her grow up through pictures.

And then, all at once, the joy he's feeling stops and when he looks down all he can see is a ghost from his past; all he can see if a face he had thought to be long, long forgotten. 

* * *

><p>He's sitting at the table when she comes back home, a shopping bag on her arm. He's sitting there with a completely serious look on his face, hands folded, watching her every move. She pauses in the doorway, watches him watching her, furrows her eyebrows at him. "Something wrong?"<p>

"Sit. We need to talk."

Her eyebrows remain furrowed but she does what he asks, takes a seat across from him, lowers the bag on her arm to the floor. There's something about that sentence she doesn't like, something that makes her blood run cold. Whenever someone says that it always ends badly. But she sits, and she waits, and she watches him, her eyes never leaving his face until he unfolds his hands, reaches down to his lap and puts the picture he had there on the table, slides it closer to her.

"Care to explain this?" He taps the picture, watches her eyes flicker down to it and then back up to his face.

"Explain what?"

"Don't play dumb with me, Ariadne. We both know you're not."

Ariadne keeps her eyes on his face for a moment and then looks down at the picture in front of him, reaches out and takes the picture off of the table, holds it in front of her, looks at her twelve year-old self sitting on her porch, her wind blowing in her hair. "You recognize me, don't you?"

"I recognize you in this picture, yes."

Eames sits back in his chair, folds his arms over his chest. "I was living in America at the time," he says slowly, watching her face. "I was pretty new to making forgeries for profit and this girl came to see me. Tiny little thing. Couldn't have been more than eleven, twelve. She just walked right into my little office in that crap part of town and asked me to forge documents for her. Said she needed to be sure that her mother's boyfriend's car accident was ruled just that- an accident. And she needed to be sure of that because-"

"Because she killed him." She puts the picture back down on the table and sits back herself, rests her hands in her laps as she looks at him. "She cut his break cable and he crashed his car into a tree. And while her mother was screaming the girl went over, touched his bloody face. He was still alive. Didn't die until the car exploded."

"And when she met me all those years later she didn't tell me it was her." He meets her eyes. "She didn't bother telling me I've been sleeping with a woman who murdered someone when she was a kid."

"Maybe she didn't think it was important."

"It's murder. That's always important."

"It was a long time ago."

"It doesn't matter how long ago it was. Murder is murder."

"He deserved it." Standing up from the table she grabs the bag again and makes her way towards the kitchen. "Maybe that's why she didn't mention it. Because he deserved it. And besides, you forged the papers. If you didn't care then why would you care now?"

Eames just watches her for a few seconds while she puts away her groceries, reaches over and moves the picture back over to his side of the table. "Because back then I wasn't sleeping with her. She was just some anonymous kid that came to get papers and paid me for them. I had no reason to care."

"Let me tell you a story." She pauses in what she's doing and turns to look at him. Folding her hands behind her back she leans against the counter. "Once there was a little girl and the only thing she had in the world was her mother. And it was just them for a long, long time. And then her mother found a boyfriend and at first they were happy. They were very happy. But the man wasn't a good man like he pretended to be. The man was a monster." Pausing she shrugs her shoulders a bit. "He used to beat the little girl's mother. He raped her when she would try to push him away. And the mother would sneak out at night sometimes to drink her worries away."

"And then one day the monster came over when the mother was out. And he was so, so angry," she continues in a hollow tone. "He went into the little girl's room and demanded to know where the mother was. And when she said that she didn't know he said she lied. So he hit her. And he raped her. And the mother couldn't believe that her child had been hurt that way so she pushed it away. And the little girl knew that nothing would change unless her mother got strong. But her mother was weak and they were both so, so hurt that the little girl knew that she had to do something about it. So she decided that she had to kill the man. And when he was gone they were safe again but the mother was so broken that she never recovered."

"The mother spent the rest of her life in a mental facility." Her leg shakes in an awkward, jumpy fashion, her foot tapping against the floor. "The girl stayed with an aunt until she became an adult and the mother never got better. And when the mother died the daughter just buried her and never told anyone about it. The girl had gotten away with it because of a man that helped her. And when he helped her, when she got away with it, it changed her world."

He stands up slowly as he watches her. "Ariadne-"

"You saved me." Her eyes meet his, her face completely serious as she watches him. "I had no choice but to kill him to get rid of him. If I didn't he would have killed my mother. Or me. And because you forged those documents I was able to have a normal life. That wouldn't have happened without you."

"You could have told me, darling. You _should_ have told me."

"You would have looked at me differently. You would have looked at me the way you're looking at me _now_. Like you're not sure if you should be disgusted by me or if you should feel sorry for me."

"You don't disgust me, Ariadne."

"I don't want you to feel sorry for me either. I don't want your sympathy."

"Oh, luv," he breathes out, walking across the short distance between the table and the kitchen counter. Reaching up he cups her face in his hand, brushes his thumb over her cheek. "I don't feel sorry for you. Not at all." His thumb pauses against his cheek while he watches her. "Does the story have more to it?"

"Well, the girl's aunt treated her well. She graduated high school with honors, moved to go to Paris to go to school to be an architect. She met this interesting group of people and breaks into people's minds to help steal information. And one member of that little group is the very man who saved her, the man who helped her get away with murder. She saw him again but he didn't recognize her. And she just wanted to be friends with him, just wanted to be close to him because she was so thankful. But it went beyond that. In the end they fell into bed together."

"Is that how the story ends?"

"I don't know," she admits, presses her cheek more firmly against his palm, slips her arms up around his neck. "The girl feels like she might be falling in love with the man who saved her but in their world things are scary. Things are dangerous. It could only be a matter of time before something bad happens to one of them. And she isn't sure if the man cares about her all that much."

"He does," he assures her, moving his hand up to run his fingers through her hair. "And he doesn't have any idea how things will turn out either. But he'd like to stick around to find out."

She smiles at him, just a little bit. "I think the girl would really like that."

He didn't know what to say after that, wasn't sure if there was anything else to say. So he just stood there for a while and thought about that little girl who had killed her mother's boyfriend.

And he thought about the wonderful woman she had become.


End file.
